festuca

English

Noun

festuca (plural festucas)

1. fescue grass

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin festūca.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /feˈstu.ka/
• Rhymes: -uka
• Hyphenation: fe‧stù‧ca

Noun

festuca f (plural festuche)

1. straw
   • 1321, Dante Alighieri, La divina commedia: Inferno [The Divine Comedy: Hell], 12th edition (paperback), Le Monnier, published 1994, Canto XXXIV, page 506, lines 10–12:

     Già era, e con paura il metto in metro, ¶ là dove l'ombre tutte eran coperte, ¶ e trasparien come festuca in vetro.

     Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it, there where the shades were wholly covered up, and glimmered through like unto straws in glass.

2. fescue

Further reading

• festuca in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Latin

Alternative forms

• fistūca (“ram, piledriver”), historically sometimes considered a separate word

Etymology

Perhaps connected to ferula, with a common earlier stem *fes-. De Vaan notes if suffixation is with +‎ -ūcus as in several plant names: sambūcus (“elderberry”), albūcus (“asphodel; asphodel bulb”), lactūca (“lettuce”), the stem could be *festo. Gaffiot numbers the sense of ram, piledriver, usually spelt fistūca, a separate word, but it is offered as an alternative spelling in De Vaan. Also compare fistula (“pipe, tube”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /fesˈtuː.ka/,
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /fesˈtu.ka/,

Noun

festūca f (genitive festūcae); first declension

1. straw
2. stalk, stem
3. rod used to touch slaves in ceremonial manumission
4. ram, piledriver (often spelt fistūca in this sense)
5. (Medieval Latin) rod as a symbol of legal authority

Declension

First-declension noun.

Derived terms

• dēfestūcō
• festūcātiō
• festūcō

Descendants

• French: fétu
• → Translingual: Festuca

References

• “festuca”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• festuca in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
• festuca in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• “festuca”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “festuca”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin
• Niermeyer, Jan Frederik (1976) “festuca”, in Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden, Boston: E. J. Brill